don't know about you but when I read the story, the Mozilla website is totally unavailable while I've gotten the thing on bittorrent via that link while typing this reply...
I will consider paying today's first class rates (on our current subsonic planes) for a economy style seat on a suborbital plane if I could fly from Singapore to London in 2 hours.
2 hours is a heck of a lot different from 14-15 hours. A holiday to Europe can now be two days longer than before just by saving on travel time (goodness knows about the jet lag with that kind of travel speed though). That's a lot of time if you're working and your annual leave is limited.
This kind of utility is, imho, worth paying two to three times or slightly more than the current prices.
I am also a geek and keep up with the latest in technology (I read slashdot, I read computing and science magazines).
I can assure you that, in the next 10 years and probably more, there is no way a machine is going to replace a human doctor for diagnosis of a patient.
There are just too many subjective things in medicine. It's way more complex than a chess game.
A complaint that starts out as "I have abdominal pain" can mean anything from the completely innocuous to something truly life-threathening. There is no machine, no software, no artifical neural network available today that can distinguish the thousands of possible causes of abdominal pain down to something you can work with. I don't see anything that can do this being invented in the next decade or two.
Doctors aren't going out of business anytime soon.
One more thing - medicine is expensive also because of the medical insurance, not just the doctors.
It's the mode of transmission too. Doctors and nurses wearing protective equipment were getting SARS at one point. SARS is spread through fine droplets and maybe aerosols.
Yellow fever, on the other hand, requires mosquitoes.
You can get SARS by sitting next to someone with SARS on the subway in New York.
On the other hand, unless New York becomes warm enough to attract mosquitoes, you should be relatively safe from yellow fever there.
Even for something like tuberculosis, which is transmitted by droplets, the infectivity is far lower than SARS. Ask any doctor who knows something about SARS.
SARS has a mortality rate of more than 10% so far in Singapore.
In the past century, there has not been any other infectious disease that has spread so fast and consumed medical and political resources of affected countries so fast.
Just because your country has not been significantly affected (so far) does not mean that this is a minor problem.
It's still early in the progression of SARS. If there are no good public health measures to limit the spread of SARS, it's entirely conceivable that the entire world would be infected by 2005. Even assuming that the mortality sticks at 10% or so, that's a heck of a lot of dead people.
Singapore has a first rate hospital system. Before you ask, yes, I do know. I work there. I also did my medical training and a year's work in Australia so I can compare the health systems.
The mortality rate in Singapore is likely to be higher than 5% by the time this is over. If everyone *currently* in ICU with SARS dies, that's going to be a mortality rate of close to 10%.
Mind you, amongst the deaths so far in Singapore there's an otherwise healthy 29 year old woman whose only contact was travelling to Hong Kong, a previously very healthy (I knew him) 27 year old doctor and a couple of 50-something year old people (parents of the first index case).
I'm a doctor and I don't like these odds. I agree you shouldn't be running for your mask just yet but if SARS comes to your city, well...
btw, surgical masks aren't sufficient, you should get at least N95 certified masks...
The usual annual influenza outbreaks have a mortality of less than 1%, typically 0.1%. The 1918 Influenza Pandemic was a particularly virulent strain that had a mortality rate of somewhere between 1 and 1.5%.
Now we have an extremely contagious disease that has a mortality rate of 5% and it seems to have a preponderance to take out the medical people first and you have a potentially big problem on your hands.
Please take back your statement about SARS being "not particularly more deadly than the flu".
Just confirmed the report on medline (search of medical journal articles).
Couldn't find the article itself but I found a letter discussing this child who drank a mixture of orange juice and liquid nitrogen (who subsequently required major abdominal surgery) which quoted this other case...
"The only similar case was that of a chemical engineering student who drank a beaker of liquid nitrogen and developed immediate pain and collapsed. He was found to have free air under the diaphragms and pneumomediastinum but no perforations. Full recovery followed supportive care (Cynthia Aaron, personal communication, 1998)."
- if it's too cheap, they go bankrupt, and we are back where we started
Well, if the company goes bankrupt, the next guy will buy the assets for even less money and the service will become even cheaper.
The fiber is already in the ground. The debt restructuring will continue until the market determines the price at which it will operate... presumably at much cheaper prices, eventually......
In Malaysia, pirate DVDs are now available for between RM8 and RM10. The exchange rate to the US$ is US$1=RM3.8 since Mahathir pegged the Ringgit during the Asian currency crisis.
At that price, very few people in Malaysia are paying full price for original DVDs.
I saw a woman who said she made it out from the 56th floor of the second tower (the 2nd to collapse, that is) by walking down the stairs along with everyone else.
I would, except that a lot of Telstra ADSL users are on a fixed contract, with penalties for an early opt-out (just like a mobile phone contract)
They changed the contract so technically you do have a right to opt out... I think a judge would look kindly on your part if you asked Telstra to either continue with the current terms for the remainder of your contract or release you from your contract... and maybe even refund your installation fee...
Well, I can hope, can't I? (I'm also in the same boat as the other... oh... 5600 signatures on that petition page now)
I do believe that hydrogen always burns with a pale blue flame. What you're referring to are the burning of hydrocarbons. That's a different kettle of fish. Hydrogen contains no carbon (duh). It either burns or it doesn't. It does not burn with "much non-consumed fuel".
The airship should not have died, as an article in Discover, November 2000 edition, says.
There is utility in using large, slow moving aircraft for doing stuff like moving heavy machinery, taking tourists on joy rides and even acting as a single mobile phone tower for an entire city.
The last bit was particularly interesting for me. Just imagine - a big blimp parked 10 miles overhead can replace hundreds of ugly mobile phone towers on the ground for a large city. hmm...
For the industry, such differing forecasts may cause a lot of problems. For example, C. Sivasankaran's Sterling group is planning a Rs 900-crore project to set up an undersea optic fibre cable link between Chennai and Singapore with a 2.5 terabit per second capacity (1 terabit equals 1,000 gbps), while Sunil Mittal's Bharti Enterprises has tied up with Singapore Telecom (SingTel) for another sub-sea cable with 2.5 terabit capacity. BPL is also considering joining hands with other telecom companies to set up a sub-sea cable link.
Here in Sydney, the Red Cross got banned from advertising for its "Olympic blood donation campaign" as it expected supplies of donor blood to drop drastically as people went to the games.
The doctors over here in the Olympic Hospital joked that in response, they ought to ban I.O.C. members from receiving any Red Cross blood if they needed any...
No kidding. The Sydney Red Cross got blasted by the IOC for using the word "Olympic" for the latest Blood donation drive to get more blood donations ahead of the Olympic games.
Sheesh. I reckon Sydney hospitals should strike back by telling all Olympic officials that there is no blood available for any of them if they require any sort of transfusion.
from http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/topics/f2k/whit epaper/page6.asp
Ten years ago Microsoft set out a vision of a world with Information at Your Fingertips. Back then, information was anything but: modems were connected at 4800 baud, most messages were sent by fax rather than e-mail, and few people had even heard of the Internet. Although we envisioned a world in which people could connect with the information they wanted, when they wanted it, from whatever device they wanted, we had no idea what technologies would help make that a reality. Today, we do.
I thought that 10 years ago, Microsoft totally eschewed the Net. Even in 1994/95, they were actively promoting the Microsoft Network as a replacement for the Internet...
Slashdot Mirror
don't know about you but when I read the story, the Mozilla website is totally unavailable while I've gotten the thing on bittorrent via that link while typing this reply ...
Don't forget Eugene who asks his dad, the doctor - he got the reply "I think it's 4, but let's order a test to confirm that..."
you just have to fix it while it's still running ...
For the human body, you can't have "try rebooting the system and see if the application still works"
Yes, but being able to spot the difference between influenza and SARS can save a community ...
I will consider paying today's first class rates (on our current subsonic planes) for a economy style seat on a suborbital plane if I could fly from Singapore to London in 2 hours.
2 hours is a heck of a lot different from 14-15 hours. A holiday to Europe can now be two days longer than before just by saving on travel time (goodness knows about the jet lag with that kind of travel speed though). That's a lot of time if you're working and your annual leave is limited.
This kind of utility is, imho, worth paying two to three times or slightly more than the current prices.
Note: I am not rich.
J.R.R. Tolkien is already dead and can't have any more say in the production of the movie based on his books...
...
Just pointing out the obvious
I had a friend who told me that if your batting average (for getting laid) was only 5%, you just need to have the stomach to ask 20 more girls...
I am a medical doctor.
I am also a geek and keep up with the latest in technology (I read slashdot, I read computing and science magazines).
I can assure you that, in the next 10 years and probably more, there is no way a machine is going to replace a human doctor for diagnosis of a patient.
There are just too many subjective things in medicine. It's way more complex than a chess game.
A complaint that starts out as "I have abdominal pain" can mean anything from the completely innocuous to something truly life-threathening. There is no machine, no software, no artifical neural network available today that can distinguish the thousands of possible causes of abdominal pain down to something you can work with. I don't see anything that can do this being invented in the next decade or two.
Doctors aren't going out of business anytime soon.
One more thing - medicine is expensive also because of the medical insurance, not just the doctors.
It's the mode of transmission too. Doctors and nurses wearing protective equipment were getting SARS at one point. SARS is spread through fine droplets and maybe aerosols.
Yellow fever, on the other hand, requires mosquitoes.
You can get SARS by sitting next to someone with SARS on the subway in New York.
On the other hand, unless New York becomes warm enough to attract mosquitoes, you should be relatively safe from yellow fever there.
Even for something like tuberculosis, which is transmitted by droplets, the infectivity is far lower than SARS. Ask any doctor who knows something about SARS.
SARS has a mortality rate of more than 10% so far in Singapore.
In the past century, there has not been any other infectious disease that has spread so fast and consumed medical and political resources of affected countries so fast.
Just because your country has not been significantly affected (so far) does not mean that this is a minor problem.
It's still early in the progression of SARS. If there are no good public health measures to limit the spread of SARS, it's entirely conceivable that the entire world would be infected by 2005. Even assuming that the mortality sticks at 10% or so, that's a heck of a lot of dead people.
Singapore has a first rate hospital system. Before you ask, yes, I do know. I work there. I also did my medical training and a year's work in Australia so I can compare the health systems.
...
...
The mortality rate in Singapore is likely to be higher than 5% by the time this is over. If everyone *currently* in ICU with SARS dies, that's going to be a mortality rate of close to 10%.
Mind you, amongst the deaths so far in Singapore there's an otherwise healthy 29 year old woman whose only contact was travelling to Hong Kong, a previously very healthy (I knew him) 27 year old doctor and a couple of 50-something year old people (parents of the first index case).
I'm a doctor and I don't like these odds. I agree you shouldn't be running for your mask just yet but if SARS comes to your city, well
btw, surgical masks aren't sufficient, you should get at least N95 certified masks
The usual annual influenza outbreaks have a mortality of less than 1%, typically 0.1%. The 1918 Influenza Pandemic was a particularly virulent strain that had a mortality rate of somewhere between 1 and 1.5%.
Now we have an extremely contagious disease that has a mortality rate of 5% and it seems to have a preponderance to take out the medical people first and you have a potentially big problem on your hands.
Please take back your statement about SARS being "not particularly more deadly than the flu".
Just confirmed the report on medline (search of medical journal articles).
...
Couldn't find the article itself but I found a letter discussing this child who drank a mixture of orange juice and liquid nitrogen (who subsequently required major abdominal surgery) which quoted this other case
"The only similar case was that of a chemical engineering student who drank a beaker of liquid nitrogen and developed immediate pain and collapsed. He was found to have free air under the diaphragms and pneumomediastinum but no perforations. Full recovery followed supportive care (Cynthia Aaron, personal communication, 1998)."
hmmm.....
- if it's too cheap, they go bankrupt, and we are back where we started
Well, if the company goes bankrupt, the next guy will buy the assets for even less money and the service will become even cheaper.
The fiber is already in the ground. The debt restructuring will continue until the market determines the price at which it will operate... presumably at much cheaper prices, eventually......
In Malaysia, pirate DVDs are now available for between RM8 and RM10. The exchange rate to the US$ is US$1=RM3.8 since Mahathir pegged the Ringgit during the Asian currency crisis.
At that price, very few people in Malaysia are paying full price for original DVDs.
I saw a woman who said she made it out from the 56th floor of the second tower (the 2nd to collapse, that is) by walking down the stairs along with everyone else.
At least a decent number of people made it out.
Hopefully.
They changed the contract so technically you do have a right to opt out ... I think a judge would look kindly on your part if you asked Telstra to either continue with the current terms for the remainder of your contract or release you from your contract ... and maybe even refund your installation fee ...
Well, I can hope, can't I? (I'm also in the same boat as the other ... oh ... 5600 signatures on that petition page now)
I don't know about you, but if I came across a coin that flipped heads 100 times in a row, I'd strongly suspect a biased coin.
I do believe that hydrogen always burns with a pale blue flame. What you're referring to are the burning of hydrocarbons. That's a different kettle of fish. Hydrogen contains no carbon (duh). It either burns or it doesn't. It does not burn with "much non-consumed fuel".
The airship should not have died, as an article in Discover, November 2000 edition, says.
There is utility in using large, slow moving aircraft for doing stuff like moving heavy machinery, taking tourists on joy rides and even acting as a single mobile phone tower for an entire city.
The last bit was particularly interesting for me. Just imagine - a big blimp parked 10 miles overhead can replace hundreds of ugly mobile phone towers on the ground for a large city. hmm...
when completed, it will (temporarily) be the largest capacity undersea cable in the world.
http://www.businessworldindia.com/archive/200911 /mktg2.htm
skip to near the bottom for:
Available here
To be taken with a grain of salt as it does come from a Malaysian press.
Here in Sydney, the Red Cross got banned from advertising for its "Olympic blood donation campaign" as it expected supplies of donor blood to drop drastically as people went to the games.
The doctors over here in the Olympic Hospital joked that in response, they ought to ban I.O.C. members from receiving any Red Cross blood if they needed any ...
No kidding. The Sydney Red Cross got blasted by the IOC for using the word "Olympic" for the latest Blood donation drive to get more blood donations ahead of the Olympic games.
Sheesh. I reckon Sydney hospitals should strike back by telling all Olympic officials that there is no blood available for any of them if they require any sort of transfusion.
I thought that 10 years ago, Microsoft totally eschewed the Net. Even in 1994/95, they were actively promoting the Microsoft Network as a replacement for the Internet...